Sight
by Ifgrasswereblue
Summary: If he looks back far enough, he can see a broken fragment of a fulfilled dream's regret. Quirk!Izuku


**Disclaimer: I do not own BNHA and any of its characters.**

AN: Growing Pains by Birdy

* * *

_My mind is a runaway_

_And I'll find it's too hard to breathe;_

_Just say what you want to say._

* * *

**First sight**

If he looks back far enough, he can see a broken fragment of a fulfilled dream's regret. There will be a man waiting, seated upon a wooden bench beneath the cherry blossom trees. Spaces of lines pressed down by the weight of his body (burden), he'll find the man's clothes crumpled, creased – a mountain's worth of unsmoothed nooks and crannies. Why is he there? Why does he only sit, unmoving, unblinking? This, a young child asks with a curiosity as cruel as it is kind.

The man is there because there is no place left to go.

To move forward is to leave the past behind; to move backwards means to abandon a future that means little now to one such as he. Caught in between the two, a timeless limbo feels like a perfect penance for the monstrosity that are his sins. What has he done then? The boy inquires again, balancing on the balls of his heels. Fingers spread into a starfish, his body is ready to counter any fall with an in-built balance. The man has lost his, in a way. You know this. _Why do I know this? _

The boy is full of questions. What's so bad that the man is but a statue of a blurred line between the past and present? But his _sight_ does not reach so far, and the boy becomes sullen from the unanswered curiosity; to see is to understand, and to understand is to hear. Those are the laws of this world.

If you can look back far enough, you can see a broken fragment of a future left unfurled.

**Second sight**

The boy wakes one morning and understands that today's universe is different from yesterday's. The skies are still blue and constant droplets of water still leaks from the tap, but something has shifted, _changed_. He finds the word mind-blowing – like seeing a rainbow over an evening horizon for the first time; like touching a snake's cool, leathery skin on his second visit to the zoo during summer; like the scent of his favourite Katsudon. The boy combs through his pine green hair and says into the mirror:

Changed, changed, changed.

His mother knocks thrice on the bathroom's door. A blink, and the glow in his eyes diminishes.

He turns four today. The numbered year is a special turning point for every child all around the world. He'll get a Quirk. Excitement lingers in the space of their humble apartment as Mother and son have a hearty breakfast. Inko smiles over the extra serving of eggs her son asks for and the boy offers a genuine one of his own when the world then suddenly settles, a shimmer of mending colour in greyscale.

_("Take the right turn. Kacchan won't be there." Someone says, soft and sad, the voice that's barely a whisper.)_

When he and his mother walks the path to school, everything is replaced. The streets no longer have their standing lights to lead the way at night; they've been broken into many pieces whereupon the boy fearfully trips over a fragment that's half his size. His gaze shifts to the side, back starting to cool with sweat as cold as ice and _Mom's not there._ Only a sky full of smoke-filled orange. Then the boy scrunches both eyes because they're starting to burn - a stream of _hot hot hot _down his face - and the sound of a wailing siren's cry freezes.

He opens his eyes and Mom's concerned face greets him. Her expression is an unfortunate mix of lostness, confusion, and fearfulness. Tears well up in her eyes, so Izuku's own tear glands follow up too. "Don't cry," he tells her kindly, leaving questions for later. Inko rubs her thumb down his cheek, "I'm sorry, Izuku." she says in hiccups. "Kaa-san just got a bit worried. You got your Quirk, so let's go to the doctor now, ne?"

The smell of iron reeks like no other: the scent of a spoon covered in saliva for too long. Izuku's tongue reaches at the corner of his mouth to catch the substance that's streaming past. Blood, he realises, is weirdly sweet and salty all at once. Plus, Mom's hand that had caught his tears are sticky when it's wrapped around his skinny wrist - blood dries quickly, he learns. The right turn that the voice tells him to follow leads to the hospital. _Of course _Kacchan isn't there.

**Third sight**

The doctor's chair is a luxury compared to his.

The texture looks smooth, a line of white stitching trailing down the brownie coloured seat. Or maybe he's mistaken, the pictures seem to blend into one another the longer his _sight _stays open. He quints, and it stretches - far into the distance, far into the unknowable. It's not leather, Izuku concludes with a downtrodden expression. But… it used to be? He doesn't know. Nobody can tell him either; not even the doctor whose round glasses reflect his face smeared with remnants of dried blood. It smells disgusting and he feels sticky at his fingers where he'd tried to rub clean.

The nurse has gone off to grab a wet towel while the man makes his diagnosis. Izuku's mother tears up.

_("I wasn't supposed to be a Hero." The voice comes back, louder this time. Clearly, someone is talking to him, but _who_? Who are you? Where are you? Why do you look like lightning during that cloudless night?)_

"Izuku!" The boy hears his mother's frantic worry. "Your eyes. They're bleeding again!"

His eyelids snap shut immediately. The Quirk is a mystery and a half; he loves it anyway, even if he cannot understand what the voices or changing scenery means. Opposite him, the doctor with a funny looking moustache fiddles with the instrument he used to measure the boy's heartbeat. A sound leaves him: the kind that people make when their minds are occupied with thoughts and their absent eyes would wander upwards, seeing a cloud of recall known only to them.

"As we have no clue as to what Izuku's Quirk may be, for the time being, I can prescribe you some light Quirk-suppressing medication. Your son can have a feel on the ins and outs of his Quirk that way."

Mind spinning, Izuku focuses on the doctor's deep breath.

"... Testing the limits and whatnot. The bleeding eyes may be a cause for concern if it doesn't stop. Although in that case, we can only sit about to observe if its detrimental to his health. You mentioned that it stopped when he closed his eyes, yes?"

Inko nods.

The doctor shifts in his seat, crossing his legs. Light bounces off the smooth surface of a pair of well-kept shoes. "Then if push comes to shove, Izuku might need to go about his life half-blind if the theory that the bleeding eyes harming him are true. If not, then we'll write it off as a simple side-effect. He'll simply have to carry wet wipes around constantly as a worst case-scenario. Don't worry, Mrs. Midoriya. Whatever it is, I'm sure little Izuku will learn to adapt. He's still young, after all."

Occupied with wiping the crusty stains off his cheeks and near his mouth, Izuku forgets to ask if he can become a Hero.

**Fourth sight**

Fingers tracing the smoothness of the walls, Izuku counts his steps: five forward and one to the right to make it to his room - remembering to keep his hands slightly above his head is important because only then can he feel the doorknob. Similarly, the living area is thirteen steps front from the entrance, turn to the right once and step forward. Another right, then make sure that his knees don't bump against the coffee table.

For her son, Inko braces herself. Back at the clinic, she had taken the offered shades and long cane meant for the blind, telling herself over and over again that things are going to be okay. She has her son and Izuku has her. For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, her duty to love as a mother will always come first. In contrast to the nervous tears threatening to spill from her eyes, Izuku does well on his own. He counts and counts, mumbling rapidly the whole way through.

His hearing doesn't magically sharpen like the movies normally portray. Nor does his sense of smell or touch or taste. Everything is as usual, only with a generous amount of black and nothing other to cloud his vision. He treats it like a game, letting his _sight _go through when some attempts at maneuvering becomes difficult. A small gasp escapes him when everything is different - like before - when the ceiling crumbles with an endless thread of powdery dust. Chairs and tables alike are broken, shoved to the side as its legs are on the other side of the room. Someone had used it to protect themselves and failed. The doors are blasted down too, a piece of useless wood without its door knob in which had rolled away somewhere beneath the torn couch.

_(Someone's breath huffs from behind him. _No_, but the person's at the front: head on the ground, his silhouette kneeling, arms stretched out and hands in a fist. A mad show of sadness from a mere side-view alone. More crimson iron seeps through the floorboards, more blood. Izuku observes the curve of the figure's jawline because everywhere else hurts him. The voice speaks next to his ear, gentle words in a sorrowful timbre. "We were too late." A pause. "Don't worry, this _sight _isn't yours."_

_The voice is muffled now, its wish coming from the shadow of a head turning towards him. The presence from behind him disappears then, reappearing in the image of the grieving man without a face: "Close your eyes.") _

**Fifth sight**

There is a boy who Izuku loves. He has a name that they both know, but don't use because they had been so young when they first met. Underdeveloped tongues their toothy smiles held, little more than fleshy things used to taste and babble incomprehensible nonsense with. "Kacchan," he calls him; "Izuku," the prodigious blond child returns. It's the age, Mitsuki laughs. Bakugou Katsuki is a babe born of April and he'll be a year older than the rest by mere technicality when his schooling starts.

They live to play in the sun. So full in the joy of laughter in the prancing winds as they run like having legs are the most wondrous of Izanagi-sama's creations. They're three at the time and still friends. _Still? _Izuku questions. Friends are always, he believes. No reason has chanced upon a time to make him consider otherwise.

The mistake he makes is that Kacchan makes him open his eyes.

_("He'll call you Deku because you're useless, worthless, Quirkless. It'll get better first, I promise." It slowly lists, sounding happier than ever before. Then at the promise, Izuku can easily tell that the person the voice speaks of is dear to him.)_

Please stop, Izuku quickly shuts his _sight_, scrunching his eyes so tightly that it feels like his eyeballs might go deeper into their sockets. The classroom is a mess now, bodies littered almost everywhere. Kacchan is beside him, tall and muscular, stress line drawn across his forehead. His hands emit a smell, sweet and heady, smoking out an imprint of a scorched handprint on the kid-sized chalkboard. Izuku knows that particular board like last week; literally, for the principle had bought it under the request of their class after they won the annual sports competition.

He woefully cries as a crowd circles around him.

"What's your Quirk?" "Are those for your Quirk?" "Why are you wearing glasses now?" Several of them stay their curious questions, a tangle of short clumsy limbs and milk-scented warmth. The boy with eyes that sparkle like forest rivers leak liquid crimson, dropping rubies that break on the tiled floor. Heart-steady, their teacher reach for Midoriya's mother's contact; she has the hospital on speed dial too, just in case. Quirks and children, they go hand in hand.

Pit. Pat. Pit. Pat.

Izuku doesn't want to see these anymore.

* * *

_Are you there?_

_Tell me, are you there?_

* * *

**Sixth sight**

To his classmates, memories are like cardboard boxes on the metal-footed shelves in IKEA. What happened yesterday is yesterday's consequence. Similarly, today's batch of memories are compartmentalised into a newly unfolded box with a shiny label written in child-friendly marker. Logic becomes weak in their minds, registering poorly in the first place due to their developing brains. They can't see from another person's point of view, but are capable of kindness in ways that work for them, so why not on Midoriya?

Empty apologies aren't what they give him because the pain from a Quirk isn't their fault.

Instead, they unleash their bottled questions from the day before. Not phrased exactly, although the intention comes out the same. "Tell us your Quirk!" Someone says excitedly.

Kacchan lurks behind the group closing in Deku, watching them, looking for something their brains can't comprehend.

He doesn't find it when Deku stammers over his words because how does one explain the classroom empty of life? The shattered glass and a very vivid imagination of splintered desks and missing children and fading screams that makes his instincts screech:_ You know this! You do! Your fault! Mine - ?_

"I see things," He blurts, almost shouting in panic. "It's sad and dark and everything's all weird."

Everyone leaves him alone, carefully ushered away when Izuku forgets to keep his eyes closed. Blood is running down his cheeks again, the start of a sprouting hatred for the stream of luke-warmness shooting towards the sky like a rocket into space. Deku's pupils run: up, down, left, right.

"Don't rub," Kacchan's voice comes from somewhere by his side. Izuku's stills his hands that are almost at his face, sobbing a little when the flowery scent of soft wet wipes reaches his nose.

"What do you see?" His friend inquires bluntly.

"I told you already."

"Okay," Kacchan says.

It makes sense because it doesn't.

"Okay," Izuku repeats.

The blond holds him by the forearm, dragging him to who knows where. Soon, there's a change in the scent, and Izuku can tell that they're currently in the playground outside Kindergarten. Allowing himself a brief look, Izuku lets his eyes leak iron in exchange for seeing faded orange slides and a broken swing that's lost one side of its hanging chain. Maybe he's waiting for the voice to come when he bites his lip until they're a shade darker. It doesn't come.

Footsteps muted from the sand in the sandbox, Izuku swats the grains that Kacchan throws at him. "Are you still going to become a Hero?" the blond child asks out loud, drawing shapes in the ground that Izuku can't see even if his _sight's _opened because the tiny pictures of lit up bombs would've faded by then. Not that he'll know.

"I want to," Izuku sits down and admits softly. "But I don't know how." Kacchan is his best friend, the words come easily. "Everything's so scary and I don't know why I'm seeing all this. I see you too, Kacchan. I see you and he's so sad about it."

"Your Quirk gets sad?"

"Yeah." Izuku nods, grip tight on the guiding stick. "Sorry." the other says, not really understanding why - only sad things, bad things, are said sorry to. The magic word known to make all the badness and sadness go away. It's why the adults make them say it so much. You say sorry if you've done something someone else doesn't like, or if you aren't responding with 'thank you' or 'you're welcome' or if someone isn't happy.

Neither have commited anything to be guilty over, yet that context doesn't feel quite _right_. They choose the option where someone's upset over something. So, "Sorry." the green-haired child echoes. Like he's telling his Quirk sorry too. And maybe then will the _sight _of broken buildings and a broken Kacchan change when their apologies are accepted.

**Seventh sight**

As a child, adaptation feels both natural and disheartening at the same time. The difficulty of blind manoeuvre, of having the constant need to be alert and aware of his surroundings can be quite a pushing toll and Izuku grimaces, chewing on the flesh of his bottom lip. His eyes flutter from their widths and he half-heartedly stills the instinctive reaction to open them in the morning.

Perhaps he could have taken it as a natural progression in life - a gift taken to teach others to take nothing for granted. Izuku makes stories for himself to get through the day: ones filled with other beauties that don't involve colour or shapes or light itself. The vivid distraction works for the most part.

It's not as if he's truly lost his sight after all. Like, the sight that sees and not the _sight _that _sees. _

Prevention has always been better than cure, or so his Kaa-san encourages Izuku to simply take it as it is. Better love himself at the start before comes a time when he has to _learn _to.

"You're special." She says, running gente hands down his sweat-soaked shirt. Her boy had woken up thrashing and screaming, nightmares haunting the waking land it should not belong. He's sobbing, snot and tears feeling cold through Inko's flower patterned pajamas. "I don't want!" He's sobbing, "I'm sorry! Stop it! Stop!"

"You're special, Izuku." Inko repeats into the mess of forest green hair. "I'm sorry."

Head foggy, he vaguely realises that he can't breathe all that well either. The back of his throat also hurts and the constant in between state of sneezing-but-not feels terrible. The tears aren't blood though - a good thing - though not that it'll make much of a difference either way. Nevertheless, all that is beside the point. 'Sorry' isn't what Izuku wants to hear.

Morning comes, a sinking moon replaced with a rising sun. Soft light filtering through the window, Izuku painfully blinks his swollen eyes at the All Might poster on the wall. _Sight _flashing, it's torn up now, edges breaking away while his idol's smile remains untouched save the few smudges of dust like someone had used their fingers to touch it, leaving inconsistent colours for him to see. His mother sleeps beside him all curled up as Izuku uses her arm as a pillow.

Perhaps from today onwards, he'll try to smile, not weep, because he's five now. The same number that makes up all the fingers on one hand. It's a big number. And according to Kacchan, big boys don't cry.

**Eighth sight**

The sound of a moving river startles Izuku. Truly a gentle sound, he must admit, all calm swishes and soft blending murmurs. It is unlike the panic inducing downpour of mini firecrackers popping that comes from rain. Izuku wouldn't say he's scared of gods or goddesses crying entirely. Maybe a little. It's hard to hear stuff during such days, thus making it Bad with a capital 'b'.

The creak of wood beneath suddenly groans louder in his ears; feeling the uneven ridges immediately pings _bad idea _in Izuku's head. He's six, not stupid, and certainly smarter than the average adult may think. He opens his eyes, Kacchan's back only an arm's length away. Izuku _sees_.

_(For all Izuku's knows, it's only a mere glimpse and not enough for him to look around to notice the trees or birds or sky. Kacchan shines particularly brighter than usual though, head full of sunshine strands when the light hits it just right. The boy speaks, waving around a stick. Izuku can hear the grin in his voice as he follows. "That's amazing, Kacchan!" He says, but not _him _at the same time._

_Again, again. He's in a world unbelonging to him. "He'll fall." The expected voice appears. "And when he does, don't offer your hand." It advises into the shell of his ear. _

Why not? _"Because Kacchan needs help in ways that are different from others. Remember, don't offer your hand." _

_Izuku instinctively grasps the sigh in the voice's words: A tired feeling, a fond feeling. The boy finds himself aching.)_

He follows the advice. Scoring nothing from his body in which will bruise for days to come.

Kacchan falls and Izuku doesn't catch him. Instead, he pretends to slip as well - abusing his blindness in order to perform a maddening act of recklessness. His mother will be so worried, but he really can't think of a better way to 'help' on the spot. It ends with two loud splashes from him and his friend respectively. Kacchan weirdly intense stare drill holes in him, but Izuku laughs it off, pulling a barely convincing act from the skills he'd learned from the annual concert last year.

The green haired child gets up, legs wobbly as he struggles to gain a foothold on the uneven riverbed. Playfully, he flicks water at Kacchan, snapping him out of focus on his person. The blond boy rubs his eyes, scowling when he smells like the strange musk of nature. Izuku pulls a more genuine giggle this time. Kacchan sharpens a glare his way.

"Kacchan!" Izuku screeches excitedly when the blond tosses a handful of water at him.

"Take that!"

"Nooo-!"

They're joined by Kacchan's two other friends soon after. Playing in the river until their cheeks become flushed, later sitting by the river banks and talking about a future that will-never-be. Izuku calls it so in his head confidently. He doesn't know why, like so many things throughout the years.

It won't be for long; Izuku has his suspicions after today. Frowning slightly, he hopes he isn't and is right because two ideas come to him, flowing gently like the river surrounding them.

**Ninth sight**

The boy stumbles over the bag of groceries left carelessly beside the couch. Inko immediately straightens at the sound, attention leaving the person over the phone. She palms the speaker, looking over her shoulder. "Oh!" She exclaims, "I'm so sorry, Izuku. I'll clean that up real soon okay?"

A sound of affirmation leaves him before Izuku's entire body shudders with a dash of impatience that The mother will miss by a second. The thought has been on his mind since Kacchan's fall, _where is it?_ He thinks in a rare jerk of irritation by the click of pearly white teeth. _Where are her glasses? _

'On the coffee table,' Izuku eventually finds out after blowing hot air upwards and dropping on his knees to just crawl all over the living room. His fingers spread, arms extending. It's much safer this way. The boy has little dignity to keep when Home is not a place for insignificant things like that.

Black framed and squared, he slips it on.

Inko is short sighted. Izuku makes the connection between then and now and he _does not bleed_.

**Tenth sight**

How does one describe the weight of the world when they hold it in their arms?

_My baby,_ is all she thinks.

Izuku has never been the largest child. He is young, fragile, and everything that Hisashi will never teach him to be in his absence. Yet, there is nothing more to ask for. Perhaps only safety, health, happiness - freely given. Inko understands not to ask too much. She does once and her husband no longer comes back to the home she's built and maintained for years on end.

"_I'm back. Did you miss me, my dear?"_

Sometimes, Inko dreams.

The sky falls and she simply takes it by the seams to make a blanket, wrapping it around her precious son. Then the trees bend their backs, gnarly branches curling around them as leaves of fading colours tickles their faces. Legs folded, the grass on the hill beneath are all shades of grey; behind, the couch that sits behind them belongs to the living room, looking two decades older. Inko rests her basket on the cushion, an All Might face towel covering the contents inside.

They have a picnic, Izuku and her.

She counts the dotted freckles on his cheeks as he eats. Chopsticks in hand, he won't start before she does. The food never makes it to her tongue but Izuku's does at least. He devours the bowl of Katsudon the same way he devours episode after episode of All Might cartoons.

Inko laughs and the sound feels muted.

Then his freckles becomes pools of still ink. Pouring, pouring, pouring.

Izuku disappears. The hill melts and adds swirls of grey on the surface. Inko's basket has suddenly transformed into a boat, the same little kayak that Hisashi had brought her on during their third date. It rocks back and forth on a liquid galaxy in the middle of nowhere. There are no skies above because she's already taken it down earlier.

Quiet. Tranquil. Serene. A place where no one - no _thing _may reach. She feels so very alone.

Inko cries when her son's Quirk first appears because for a split second, she's reminded of her dreams where his freckles become a great empty lake. They don't, but fear has never been an easy opponent to best.

_He's growing. _The thought leaves in a snap when the doctor implies that her son may be blind for an unspecified amount of time.

Izuku bounces on the couch, arms thrown up in obvious joy. He calls her - _oh_, how he screams it for the world to hear and know: "Mom! Mom! I can open my eyes now!"

Dropping the phone immediately, she hugs him tight like her previous fear will fill up the warmth of the earth and come alive to take Izuku away.

During that period of blindness for both of them, worry fails to describe her feelings when she'd imagined tens upon hundreds of scenarios in which her baby may come to harm or worse - death. He can't see so what if he's snatched away by somebody one day? What if a slipping car faces his way and he doesn't hear it fast enough before it hits him? What if he can't defend himself from Villains, or simply run away to a safe place without running into mundane obstacles like a tree?

(Her son is not broken, but it doesn't change the fact that his disability can make it easier to exploit the cracks placed on every human being once they come into this world.)

Almost mockingly, happiness bursts like an array unending fireworks during the New Years that keep her from sleeping at night. Because there's always been a dark part of Inko that feels bitter and cruel whenever she imagines the what if scenario of her son's Quirk turning out alright and he'll regain his sight once more. The possibility was never impossible.

'You don't have to try.' 'I'm not sorry.' The deceivingly soft compulsion to simultaneously lash out and beg Izuku whispers in subtle seduction. She is incapable of stopping the evil heart that asks for time to stop for a moment or twenty.

The mother buries her fingers into the thick of the boy's hair. She breathes in, smelling the pleasant lavender shampoo, wondering if she can go through this again.

'Not much is asked for. Perhaps only safety, health, happiness - freely given.' More is forbidden. But if happiness equals to growing which equals to leaving, Inko will just have to learn how to be strong once more.

* * *

_I fear these growing pains_

_That made us far too strong._


End file.
